'"
"Pray, then, father, do teach me some of these most salutary
lessons of finesse."
"We have a good number of them, answered the monk; "for there
are a great many irksome things about confession, and for each of
these we have devised a palliative. The chief difficulties connected
with this ordinance are the shame of confessing certain sins, the
trouble of specifying the circumstances of others, the penance exacted
for them, the resolution against relapsing into them, the avoidance of
the proximate occasions of sins, and the regret for having committed
them. I hope to convince you to-day that it is now possible to get
over all this with hardly any trouble at all; such is the care we have
taken to allay the bitterness and nauseousness of this very
necessary medicine. For, to begin with the difficulty of confessing
certain sins, you are aware it is of importance often to keep in the
good graces of one's confessor; now, must it not be extremely
convenient to be permitted, as you are by our doctors, particularly
Escobar and Suarez, 'to have two confessors, one for the mortal sins
and another for the venial, in order to maintain a fair character with
your ordinary confessor- uti bonam famam apud ordinarium tueatur-
provided you do not take occasion from thence to indulge in mortal
sin?' This is followed by another ingenious contrivance for confessing
a sin, even to the ordinary confessor, without his perceiving that
it was committed since the last confession, which is, 'to make a
general confession, and huddle this last sin in a lump among the
rest which we confess.
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